The large
base is £1.30, the small base is £1. Bargain – even with shipping to Australia. All of the bases with shipping came to about £16, or around $30 Australian.

They consist
of two main pieces, a base and a top plate that has the holes cut into it for
the tree bases. The tree bases are nice sized discs that allow for lots of room
for you to add additional modeling if you desire.

With the
bases constructed I then painted them black, put polyfiller around the edge to
give it a smooth, non-stepped look, and put filler in random spots to make the
ground a little more contoured. I then glued some larger pieces of gravel in
random spots to simulate some rocks and boulders, and then finally flocked the
whole base with sand.

When everything
was dry I painted the bases brown and drybrushed them successive lighter
shades. I painted the boulders grey. I have no idea if this is actually
geologically correct – grey rocks on brown earth, but it looks very visually
appealing to my eye.

I stuck the
bases of the tree armatures onto the 4ground bases and modeled these in the
same way – filler, rocks, sand, paint.

When this
was all dry I put on the static grass.

Okay, so
the trees themselves. I watched a few youtube videos on how to construct a tree
using armatures and clump foliage, and as I’d never done it before, I followed
these. Trevor from Woodland Scenics (what else would a Train guy be named)
makes it look easy.

So I twisted the branches around and got the armatures into a shape I was happy
with. It’s worth noting something here. The branches are positioned on the
trunk on two sides only, so you need to twist them around to get full coverage
over the whole tree. Even then, they tend to gravitate back towards one side.
This actually worked to my advantage in putting the trees on the terrain bases,
because it meant I could align the two flatter sides and branches weren’t
getting in the way. However, if you were looking at creating individual tree
stands, I would even go so far to clip off branches from the trunk and glue
them on the faces that don’t have any branches.

With the
armatures done, I lightly airbrushed the trunks a brown colour to give them a
less plastic look. I then painted the branches with hob-e tack and waited the required
time to let it set. When dry, it’s a tack substance that lets you put clump
foliage directly on the area that has been painted with the tack.

So I did
this, and they looked good. I left them to dry overnight. In the morning, I
would say half of the foliage had shed and fallen off the branches. I could
easily pick off large parts of other foliage as well. So I turned the trees
upside down and shook them, and most of the foliage came off. I reapplied the
hob-e tack, and waited longer this time for it to set, a good hour. I went
through the application of foliage process again, and then put them to one side
overnight.

Next
morning, a similar but less disastrous result. Less shedding, but still large
clumps had come away. I got out my hot glue gun and used that instead. Worked a
treat. My single biggest piece of advice here is that hob-e tack, as well as
being appallingly spelled, is junk. It might be okay for a fixed layout, but it
just doesn’t have the staying power for terrain that is being continually picked
up. The hot glue gun is a little messier, but gives a much better bond. Also,
don’t “dip” the tree into a bowl of foliage like our man Trevor does – this gives
terrible coverage. Take the individual clumps and pinch them into the branches –
it’s a much firmer contact between the foliage and the branch surface areas.

With this
done I sprayed everything vigorously with matte sealer. This hardens the
foliage and makes the whole tree sturdier. Note that they are still a bit fragile.
They are fine if you store them well and get them out to put on a table, but I
wouldn’t want to be stacking them in a box at a club or something similar.

Final word
on the foliage. I bought the three colours that Woodland scenic sell: Light
Green, Medium Green and Dark Green. There is almost no colour difference
between medium and dark green. IN direct sunlight you can just tell the
difference. I’d go with light and medium, you don’t need all three. Also, make
sure you only use one colour on one tree. Trees don’t have big colour variances
in their leaves, so a mixture of foliage on the one tree will look strange. I
have seen examples of this online and they look weird. Use one colour for each
tree, but you can then vary the trees on the bases.

Hope this
gives you some ideas if you’re thinking of going down this path with your
trees.